We interrupt the Holiday Countdown to bring you our esteemed judge’s awards! Given how awesome our judges are, we’re pretty sure you’ll understand! Each of these winners will receive $500 for each judge’s prize.

Courtney Dolloff of Design Work Life, Head vs. Heart, and Seamless Creative is an arbiter and creator of great design. She also just recently became a Mrs!! A huge congratulations from the entire Minted community on your recent nuptials!

Courtney had a hard time narrowing down her favorites, but she eventually came to the same conclusion as Elizabeth, yes, as luck would have it, two of our judge’s chose the exact same design so the winner will receive a grand total of $1,000:

We’re not surprised, this is such a beautiful design. The stripes have so much pop and the snowflake is so beautifully put together. I love the repeated dots and the floral motifs throughout. It’s just simply gorgeous. Stunning. Breathtaking. Refreshing. Yes, all of that and more!

Our third and final judge is Grace Bonney of the widely read and critically lauded blog Design*Sponge.

We’re so taken by this great design that we’ve actually already sung it’s praises when it won No. 21.

So double congratulations to both Sarah and Karly–you are both doubly talented ladies!

Grace was also very taken by two other designs. She gave Emily Ranneby 1st Runner Up for Joyeux Noel + St Nicholas, No. 19. And, she gave her 2nd Runner Up to–no surprise here–Nordic Snowflake by Oscar + Emma.

I love that this is so bold and graphical! But yet so crisp and simple–being all white text over a full-bleed photo. That ornament is tilted at the perfect angle–it’s almost like the ball has a little skip in its step. The light and heavy text together is just the perfect weight. And I love how the string holding up the ornament appears to be the same line as the ‘love and’ and ‘the.’ I think it will be fun to see how people work their families in and around that line. Stacey, you should be very proud! We salute you.

To begin, the word ‘joy’ is just stunning. I love the way the ‘j’ and ‘y’ are outlined and then the outline of the ‘o’ is repeated over and over in white and then once in yellow. The word actually looks like what it is describing. And the rest of the fonts complement ‘joy’ perfectly. The crisp modern headline goes well with ‘joy’ and the script of the family name is a nice change of pace, but is still in keeping with the clean and crisp theme of the card. I think I feel more joyful just from looking at this understated masterpiece–a nice way to start the day, don’t you think?

Sometimes you just see something and you just know instantly that it will be a huge hit. Such was the case with Merry Bright Cheer by Stacey Day.

Words just can’t describe how much I love the way ‘Merry’ and that snowflake are overlaid at the top here with ‘and bright’ added as a perfect afterthought. The white text and the border are crisp and excellent, especially when highlighted by the ‘and bright’ in yellow. With the green strip at the bottom, this design has just enough color. I also love how the family tag line takes the shape of a ribbon with the double line on top and bottom and I love how the family name mirrors the ‘and bright’ text. Congratulations on such a huge hit Stacey! I know families everywhere will fall in love with this stunning design.

So it’s about time man’s best friend felt the love, introducing No. 14, Reindog from 2BirdStone.

So in my family, a good friend coined our dog “the favored child” and as much as my parents love us kids that just couldn’t be more true! Now of course I love that the dog is the centerpiece here, but it’s also very well put together. There’s not much more you can say about the antlers other than AWESOME! And I love that the greeting ‘howly’ references the card’s main theme. Isn’t it helpful how the outline on the dog’s face repeats around the dog’s name as well as around the bone? And the light green background with rounded corners is the perfect finishing touch. Three barks for Ashley!

Wow guys. We are getting close! So close. We are almost to the top ten!!! But honestly all of these designs are just so good it hardly matters what number you are since it really came down to tenths of tenths of decimal points. So without further ado: No. 15. Peace Love & Hope by The Social Type.

So I can’t help but think that this card is fitting now more than ever. A ridiculously number of years later, we’re still in Iraq and ‘peace’ is still outside our reach. We’re always looking for ‘love’–that’s just the human condition–and certainly the people of Haiti are struggling to keep their ‘hope’ six months post earthquake. Heavy thoughts aside, I think ‘Peace, Love and Hope’ will show up on a lot of holiday cards this year, but probably not in this beautiful of a way. I love how the Type has put together ‘peace’. The white outline is so classy and I love how the letters alternate between red and green. And the ampersand lines up so perfectly below and continues the color alternation. The family’s name in subtle white is completely classy. All of the color elements are used in perfect balance and the white border around ‘peace’ references the white border and holds the whole thing together. Last but not least, I really like the light turquoise background that is closer to green than blue. Congrats Allison & Jessica–this is really, such a wonderful card!

This is such a fun idea and it has been executed in a carefree and whimsical way. It’s certainly fitting that ‘feast’ is the biggest and heaviest word here. The font used for ‘merriment’ looks just like what it is describing. Of course anyone who has young children–or heck even if you don’t–has to love that naps appears twice!! And, isn’t it so true that children as well as their parents live for those ‘days-off’? In short, I just love how these truly genuine sentiments keep the holiday wishes real! And just one last thing… I love that little star is in the center, but isn’t perfectly centered.

A child’s anticipation of the holiday to come and their report from Santa is arguably the very best part of the holiday season and Carrie O’Neal‘s Nice List (No. 17!) captures that excitement perfectly.

Don’t you think families everywhere will get a kick out of this? I love the headline “Be Good” and then the tag line in a much softer script “for goodness sake”. And then the stamp is just great–it’s so well put together, with the double circle, the dotted lines, and the the starred lines. I wonder if families will want to be able to downgrade their young ins to say a 7.5? A 10.0 is really, pretty nice. I don’t think I ever earned that score! Isn’t it so great how the photo is tilted–it makes the whole composition so much more interesting. And the white frame against a beige background is very classy. I really like how the photo is black and white, too. All in all, a great idea and a very solid execution.

This is one of the most elegant and thoughtful Christian cards I’ve ever laid eyes on. It couldn’t have been easy to lay out the font this perfectly to create such a nice tree. I imagine there was a lot of enlarging and shrinking of words and individual letters, as well as tilting and rotating, and re-layering. The curly q’s and loop-d-loos, in particular, are masterfully laid out. And then the red dots–don’t they mimic hanging balls in such a wonderfully understated way? I also really love how the pot of the tree is hand drawn and I love, love, love that this is a live tree–see the dirt there? This is also a very green card! I also love the sky blue background. Finally, I really love the particular lyric Carrie chose to illustrate–it’s such a lovely song and a beautifully expressed sentiment.

We invited Minted customers and fans to submit photographs of their families or their clients to be displayed in our 2010 Holiday Card Collection. We were completely blown away by the awesome photos that kept popping up on Facebook–we simply could not believe it! Over 1,300 photos were entered in total.

When these photos combine with the exceptional designs from our 2010 Holiday Card Spectacular, they will truly be something exceptional come this fall. Below you can see one photo from each winner (some photographers and families submitted multiple photos and you can see all of a person’s submissions by browsing our Facebook fan page photo album). You’ll be able to see all of the winning photographs this fall when we launch our 2010 holiday assortment.

Also, if you love these photos and want to know more about one or more of these great photographers, please email us at designers@minted.com. If one these photos is yours and we have not been in contact with you, please also email us at designers@minted.com so that we can help you collect your prize.

The winners chosen below will each receive 100 free flat or fold-over holiday cards (valued at $200), plus a generous Friends and Family discount so that they can share the love with your closest friends. A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to submit. We genuinely appreciate your sharing your beautiful families with us!